A grim pattern: Presidential voting and workplace deaths

Published 10:45 am, Friday, February 24, 2017

More than 4,800 American workers are killed on the job each year. But in states that were carried by Donald Trump, the chances of dying at work are higher than in states that Hillary Clinton won.

With a single exception, the states that voted Republican had at least three job-related deaths per 100,000 workers, according to the most recent federal labor statistics for 2015. In all but two states that went Democratic, the workplace death rate was less than three.

Two states that Trump won by landslide margins, North Dakota and Wyoming, had the highest fatality rates of 12.5 and 12.0 per 100,000 workers, respectively–more than four times the death rates of most states that went for Clinton.

A key factor, experts say, is that red states tend to have a higher percentage of hazardous blue-collar jobs, while the more urbanized blue states have more white-collar and service jobs. "The big cities where Hillary got most of her votes are not where the foundries, the mills, the logging, the mines are," said Adam Finkel, a former OSHA official now at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

And with the Trump Administration and Republican Congress pledging to spur economic growth through sweeping cuts to federal regulations, some analysts say workers in states that voted for Trump could be in greater peril.

"Workers and citizens in states in which a majority voted for Trump have much to lose if the Trump Administration weakens enforcement or reduces support for health, safety and employment standards," said Professor Thomas A. Kochan, co-director of MIT's Institute for Work and Employment Research. "Trump states have, on average, weaker state level laws and enforcement agencies than do states that have stronger Democratic histories."

Since the relatively small number of workplace deaths can give rise to random variations, particularly in low population states, analysts caution against giving too much weight to the statistics. Nevertheless, the most recent data follow a pattern of death rates being higher in the South and Appalachia and lower in New England and the West Coast, said John Mendeloff, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

"Where workers are lower paid, not as skilled, easier to replace, that probably gives lesser incentives for safety to employers," Mendeloff said. "In other words, the costs of accidents are lower."